The Seduction of Brazil: The Americanization of Brazil during World War II

by Antonio Pedro Tota, Lorena B. Ellis, Daniel J. Greenberg

Overview

Following completion of the U.S. air base in Natal, Brazil, in 1942, U.S. airmen departing for North Africa during World War II communicated with Brazilian mechanics with a thumbs-up before starting their engines. This sign soon replaced the Brazilian tradition of touching the earlobe to indicate agreement, friendship, and all that was positive and good—yet another indication of the Americanization of Brazil under way during this period.

In this translation of O Imperialismo Sedutor, Antonio Pedro Tota considers both the Good Neighbor Policy and broader cultural influences to argue against simplistic theories of U.S. cultural imperialism and exploitation. He shows that Brazilians actively interpreted, negotiated, and reconfigured U.S. culture in a process of cultural recombination. The market, he argues, was far more important in determining the nature of this cultural exchange than state-directed propaganda efforts because Brazil already was primed to adopt and disseminate American culture within the framework of its own rapidly expanding market for mass culture. By examining the motives and strategies behind rising U.S. influence and its relationship to a simultaneous process of cultural and political centralization in Brazil, Tota shows that these processes were not contradictory, but rather mutually reinforcing.

The Seduction of Brazil brings greater sophistication to both Brazilian and American understanding of the forces at play during this period, and should appeal to historians as well as students of Latin America, culture, and communications.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780292723528
Publisher:	University of Texas Press
Publication date:	08/01/2009
Series:	LLILAS Translations from Latin America Series
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	216
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

Antonio Pedro Tota is Professor on the Faculdade de Ciências Sociais at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo.

Lorena B. Ellis is Professor of German at Queensborough Community College of CUNY.

Daniel J. Greenberg is Director of the Latin American Studies Program and Associate Professor of History at Pace University.

Table of Contents

• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• List of Abbreviations
• Introduction
• 1. A True "Factory of Ideologies": The Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs
• 2. Brazil for the Americans: The United States of Brazil in the United States of America
• 3. The Boogie-Woogie in the Favela, or the Brazilian Attraction to the American Standard of Living
• Conclusion: Americanization Was Not Imitation
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Illustration Credits
• Name Index